The Huntley family put a suit for $ 11 million in the death of the son. Why the driver who hit him

The family of a 20-year-old Huntley man, who was fatally hit by a car last year, received a record agreement of $ 11.5 million in an illegal civil complaint in a Huntley-Straße. At the criminal end, the driver was only charged with violations of the crime because his actions were not ruthless, officials said.

Joseph Zepries was fatally injured when he was hit on a utility crew in the Main Street in Huntley in January last year. The police said that Zepries were “on the southern shoulder of the street, which completed the location of the Utility Line” for US infrastructure companies or USIC when he was hit to the east by an Enterprise Mider Kia forte. He died of his injuries in Northwestern Medicine Huntley Hospital.

The civil lawsuit submitted by the von Zepries family claimed that the crash took place because the driver Brandon Evans, a 28-year-old Chicago man and an enterprise employee, briefly at the wheel. According to the authorities, it was due to this involuntary complaint that he was not exposed to criminal charges for crimes in which someone was seen in cases in which someone was fatally hit by a driver, such as ruthless murder.

Ashley Romito, public prosecutor's office of Mchenry County, explained that a ruthless murder demands that one person to kill another person unintentionally by risky behaviors who are deliberately disregarded, e.g. B. acceleration, driving under influence or by running through stop signs.

“A person ruthlessly acts if they deliberately disregard a major risk that their actions will probably cause another person to death or great body loss,” said Romito. “This disregard must be a rough deviation from the standard of care that a reasonable person would exercise in the same situation.”

The ruthless murder applies to driving, while involuntary homicide generally applies to everything that is not due to traffic, according to Recht Illinois.

Due to the Dash cam film material from the police, the witnesses and several blood tests, the authorities found no evidence that Evans showed ruthless driving from a criminal perspective, said the prosecutor. There was also no impairment or a poisoning fee, nor was there the necessary ruthless behavior, she said.

Evans worked with the police, stayed at the scene and was one of many who called 911 after the crash, said Romito.

“The examination did not show that the driver lost consciousness to the result of impairment or a known risk,” she said. “After all the many reports on eyewitnesses, including first aiders, civilians and police, he drove appropriate before and after the accident.”

The records of the County County County show that Evans was charged against the reduction in speed due to a traffic violation, which is considered a minor crime. According to court records, he was completed eight transport school and paid 326 US dollars in fines.

It is a strong contrast to another case in Mchenry County, in which another young man-and 24-year-old Austin Stanek from Iceland Lake von was approached and killed a few months later.

The driver, who allegedly hit Stanek, Christine Eilers von Mchenry, has pending charges against her to report a fatal crash and left the place of a fatal crash and made it difficult to do all the criminals. In this case, the authorities who claimed when the woman first had the first court appearance that they had not stopped after the crash or called the police, drank into bars earlier at night and then “hid” their vehicle in their friend's garage.